Movie Capsules: Now Showing

OPENING TODAY

It's Complicated (R, 118 min.) See review on Page G17.

Ridgeway Four, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Me and Orson Welles (PG-13, 114 min.) See review on Page G20.

Ridgeway Four.

Nine (PG-13, 110 min.) See review on Page G18.

Collierville Towne 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso.

Sherlock Holmes (PG-13, 130 min.) See review on Page G16.

Ridgeway Four, Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

SPECIAL MOVIES

The Alps: The latest IMAX film follows climber John Harlin III in his attempt to climb the Eiger in the Swiss Alps. Runs through Nov. 12, 2010. Tickets $8, $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 children ages 3-12; children under 3 are free. Call for show times. alpsfilm.com

IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central. Call 320-6362 for tickets and reservations.

Santa vs. the Snowman: Ends Thursday. Meet Santa, the Snowman and all the elves and reindeer at the North Pole in this story of holiday spirit and friendship. Tickets $8, $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 children, 3 and younger free.

'Santa vs. the Snowman' ends Thursday at the IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum.

O Entertainment

"Santa vs. the Snowman" ends Thursday at the IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum.

Crew Training IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central. Tickets and reservations: 320-6362.

Under the Sea: This new IMAX adventure transports you to some of the most exotic and isolated undersea locations on Earth. Runs through March 5, 2010. Tickets: $8, $7.25 senior citizens, $6.25 children ages 3-12; children under 3 are free. Call for show times.

Crew Training International IMAX Theater at Memphis Pink Palace Museum, 3050 Central. Call 320-6362 for reservations and tickets.

NOW SHOWING

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (PG, 89 min.) See review on Page G15.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Armored (PG-13, 88 min.) Matt Dillon plans a heist.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, DeSoto Cinema 16, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Astro Boy (PG, 94 min.) Because this computer-generated feature from director David Bowers and Imagi Animation Studios is faithful in some respects to its key Japanese sources, the 1950s comic book and 1960s TV cartoon created by the so-called "God of Manga," Osamu Tezuka, it may creep some people out -- parents more than children, no doubt. The title hero (voiced here by Freddie Highmore) is, in fact, a robotic replica of a dead child; kids will love identifying with his super strength and flying ability, but his weird origin contributes to the film's schizophrenic tone, as rousing action set pieces alternate with grim ecological and anti-military messages (a robotic weapon of mass destruction is dubbed "The Peacemaker").

Bartlett 10.

The character Neytiri, voiced by Zoë Saldaña, is a blue-skinned humanoid native of the planet Pandora in the futuristic sci-fi blockbuster 'Avatar.'

20th Century Fox

The character Neytiri, voiced by Zoë Saldaña, is a blue-skinned humanoid native of the planet Pandora in the futuristic sci-fi blockbuster "Avatar."

Avatar (PG-13, 162 min.) Twelve years after "Titanic," writer-director James Cameron returns with the most expensive movie ever (reported budget: $240 million), a science-fiction eco-spectacle that could be described as "Dances with Wolves" or "The New World" in outer space, as a paraplegic Marine (Sam Worthington) on the distant planet Pandora in the year 2154 rejects his imperialistic, exploitative and genocidal mission after spending time in a genetically manufactured "avatar" body among the indigenous Na'vi, blue-skinned humanoids who hunt with bows and arrows, ride pterodactyl-like "banshees" and live in harmony with the planet's bioluminescent flora and fauna (including several amazing monsters). A paean to nature created almost entirely through state-of-the-art digital technology (most of the actors are themselves represented onscreen by "avatars," including Zoë Saldaña, photographed through the "motion capture" process to become a Na'vi princess), "Avatar" works as both a socially conscious Western update and a true SF film, revealing the influences of such fine genre writers as Philip José Farmer, Larry Niven and especially Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose "John Carter of Mars" novels inspired the story's premise and the design of the multilimbed creatures.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema (in 3-D), Majestic, Collierville Towne 16 (in 3-D), DeSoto Cinema 16 (in 3-D), Studio on the Square, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema (in 3-D), Paradiso (in 3-D), Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema (in 3-D), CinePlanet 16 (in 3-D), Summer Quartet Drive-In.

The Blind Side (PG-13, 126 min.) Sarah Palin isn't the only gun-toting, ex-cheerleader, conservative Christian sports mom back in the news. We've also got Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy, the no-nonsense, git-'r-done Memphian whose rescue of inner-city gentle giant and future football star Michael Oher provides the real-life inspiration for director John Lee Hancock's tearless tearjerker (steel magnolia Leigh Anne leaves the room whenever she's about to cry). Played with quiet, hulking dignity by Quinton Aaron, Michael is presented as a passive, almost infantile figure (his only apparent friend is his adoptive brother, the Tuohy's wise-cracking young son), as well as an attractive ideal for white audiences: a kid from the 'hood who is not only not a threat to the suburbs but actually a protector of white culture, roused to anger only in defense of Leigh Anne's honor while his real mother (native Memphian Adriane Lenox) languishes in Hurt Village with her crack pipe. On the positive tip, the movie -- which functions primarily as a star vehicle for Bullock -- presents a welcome sympathetic portrait of the type of "traditional values" family rarely seen onscreen. With Tim McGraw as Leigh Anne's husband, Grizzlies broadcast analyst Sean Tuohy, and Atlanta as Memphis.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (R, 117 min.) A long-delayed sequel to the 1999 DVD cult hit.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

The Box (PG-13, 116 min.) Director Richard Kelly follows the modern cult classic "Donnie Darko" and the ambitious failure "Southland Tales" with another implausible yet compelling science-fiction mystery about the hidden dark forces that control "reality." The first half is a brilliantly realized exercise in sustained tension, as mysterious stranger Frank Langella tells married couple Cameron Diaz and James Marsden they will earn $1 million if they only push a button and cause the death of a stranger; the suspense fades as the story becomes increasingly confusing and bizarre.

Bartlett 10.

Bright Star (PG, 119 min.) Inspired by the brief, consuming but apparently unconsummated love affair between the English Romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw), who died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, and his neighbor, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), this film takes its title from a Keats sonnet, but its Vermeer-like cinematography, its immaculate period production design and its tender performances suggest the famous opening line of Keats' "Endymion": "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," however doomed that beauty may be, and however much that joy is tinctured with sorrow. The movie doesn't seem like a re-creation or a museum piece; instead, director Jane Campion makes us feel as if we have been privileged to look through a window into a bygone world. The result is the most perfect film of the year, a movie that finds finds a sense of mystery and wonder even in simple shots of Fanny reading a letter in a window or of clothing flapping on a line above a muddy field. With Paul Schneider -- in the most entertaining supporting performance of 2009 -- as Keats' sardonic best friend and collaborator.

Cordova Cinema.

Brothers (R, 110 min.) Tobey Maguire is an Afghanistan vet, Natalie Portman is his wife, and Jake Gyllenhaal is Tobey's bro.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, DeSoto Cinema 16, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

A Christmas Carol (PG, 96 min.) The "motion capture" process, in which an actor's performance is translated into digital animation, enables Jim Carrey to "become" all three ghosts as well as Ebenezer Scrooge in director Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of Charles Dickens' often-told (too often-told, in fact) holiday tale about the miser who becomes a philanthropist after a night of supernatural finger-wagging.

Stage Cinema, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (PG, 90 min.) Part Jerry Bruckheimer, part Betty Crocker, this Sony Pictures Animation feature begins as a jokey, slapstick, computer-generated cartoon for kids and expands into a clever and even thrilling disaster-movie spoof that should delight fans of all ages -- it's "Apocalypse Chow," with super-sized extra toppings of everything.

Bartlett 10.

Did You Hear About the Morgans? (PG-13, 104 min.) Adorable if adulterous and agnostic salad-fancying nitwit city slickers save their marriage with the help of a God-fearing, meat-eating "Sarah Palin" and her wise sheriff husband in this formula romantic comedy, which could be described as "Green Acres" in Red State drag, plus guns. Hugh Grant -- no longer an actor but a catalog of stammers, blinks, puppy-dog pouts and other tics -- and Sarah Jessica Parker are the verging-on-divorce Manhattanite Morgans, shipped off to Montana after they become witnesses in a federal murder case. Romcom auteur Marc Lawrence wrings a few laughs from the story's cityfolk-sure-are-funny-around- grizzly-bears-and-milk-cows situations, but only Sam Elliott (the sheriff) and rifle-toting Mary Steenburgen (referred to as "Sarah Palin") emerge with their dignity intact.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard star in novelist Nick Hornby's coming-of-age story, 'An Education.'

Kerry Brown/Sony Pictures Classics

Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard star in novelist Nick Hornby's coming-of-age story, "An Education."

An Education (PG-13, 95 min.) Set in 1969 London, this impeccably mounted and acted BBC Films production from director Lone Scherfig is the type of sturdy character study and "movie of quality" that habituées of the modern "art" house expect but too infrequently experience. Adapted by popular British novelist Nick Hornby from Lynn Barber's coming-of-age memoir, the movie chronicles the initially flattering and exciting but inevitably troubling courtship/seduction of Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a pretty and extremely bright but naive 16-year-old virgin, by David (Peter Sarsgaard), a seemingly sophisticated charmer almost twice her age who seems to offer a shortcut to the life of existential novels, foreign films and jazz nightclubs that Jenny longs to inhabit. The stay-in-school message is surprisingly conventional, but its delivery is entirely pleasurable

Forest Hill 8.

The Fourth Kind (PG-13, 98) Beyond the third kind: Milla Jovovich has a spooky alien encounter.

Bartlett 10.

G-Force (PG, 88 min.) Have you ever wondered what a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced talking-animal movie would be like? Me, neither. But here's the answer: The Disney/Bruckheimer collaboration "G-Force," in which the car chases, explosions, transforming robot battles and "Mission: Impossible" suspense sequences are as intense as in an "adult" movie, except instead of Tom Cruise and Will Smith, the heroes are members of an elite squad of commando guinea pigs and insects, plus one star-nosed mole. With Memphis' Chris Ellis as "the director of the FBI," and a clever cameo appearance by Loudon Wainwright III, best known for his novelty hit, "Dead Skunk."

Bartlett 10.

The Hangover (R, 100 min.) Or: Dude, Where's My Bachelor? Sometimes tasteless, frequently hilarious, this "Superbad" with grown-ups (the dentist played by Ed Helms even resembles an adult "McLovin") chronicles several hours of irresponsible, occasionally criminal male conduct, as three best buds road-trip to Vegas for an overnight bachelor party.

Bartlett 10.

Morgan Freeman portrays South African President Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon is soccer star Francois Pienaar in 'Invictus.'

Keith Bernstein/Warner Bros. Pictures

Morgan Freeman portrays South African President Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon is soccer star Francois Pienaar in "Invictus."

Invictus (PG-13, 133 min.) Director Clint Eastwood's new movie is as formal and deliberate as its lead character, septuagenarian South African President Nelson Mandela, as portrayed with trademark self-conscious dignity by Morgan Freeman. Based on Mandela's 1995 attempt to generate unity by urging black South Africans to support the world-championship run of the almost all-white national rugby team (a longtime symbol of apartheid), the film risks dullness and embraces preachiness to pursue an idea that is given lip service by politicians but is rarely addressed in motion pictures: "How do we inspire ourselves to greatness?" Mandela's (and Eastwood's) answer: Reject revenge, because "forgiveness liberates the soul." With a buffed-up Matt Damon as real-life rugby star Francois Pienaar.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Law Abiding Citizen (R, 122 min.) Its title heavy with irony if light one hyphen, director F. Gary Gray's implausible and morally confused revenge thriller casts Gerard Butler as a grieving yet bloodthirsty antihero who might have been produced by gene-splicing the Charles Bronson of "Death Wish" with Jigsaw, the mastermind of the "Saw" franchise.

Bartlett 10, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Ninja Assassin (R, 99 min.) Although the ultrabloody nonstop mayhem is too frequently staged and edited with the chaos of a Jason Bourne action sequence rather than the violence-as- performance art elegance of a Shaw Brothers kung-fu epic, this is an exuberantly absurd 'B' movie that never tries to be to be anything but a slick update of the cheap martial arts thrillers distributed by Cannon Films in the 1980s. (To make this connection explicit, Sho Kosugi, star of 1981's "Enter the Ninja" and its followups, appears as a fighting-clan master.) The South Korean pop singer who calls himself Rain is the title hit man, whose depredations lead to an action free-for-all that would have been ballyhooed during the good old days of exploitation advertising as "Ninjas vs. Commandos!"

Majestic, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Old Dogs (PG, 88 min.) If you thought "Wild Hogs" was a riot, and apparently many of you did (the 2007 movie earned $170 million at the U.S. box office), you may be amused as well by the golf balls to the crotch, the karaoke jokes, the comical use of the "Chariots of Fire" theme, the bachelors-try-to-cook-food humor and the other comedy innovations found in this second slice of middle-age crazy from director Walt Becker and star John Travolta, joined this time by Robin Williams, who is manic enough by himself to make up for the loss of Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy. Travolta and Williams are aging bachelors and sports marketing business partners thrown for a loop when an old one-night-stand (Kelly Preston, Travolta's real-life wife) shows up with Williams' previously unknown children, young twins played by Ella Bleu Travolta (yes, John and Kelly's daughter) and Conner Rayburn. The results are utterly predictable and only fitfully amusing.

Stage Cinema, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Pirate Radio (R, 116 min.) Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy and Kenneth Branagh (as a government prude) head an ensemble cast in this would-be Ealing Studios-style comedy from writer-director Richard Curtis ("Love Actually") about a rogue radio station operating out of a party ship in the North Sea that brings nonstop rock and roll to UK teenagers in 1966, when pop music was played on the BBC for only a few hours per week. Tom Sturridge is the teen newcomer whose coming-of-age experiences aboard the boat keep the story on course, even when we'd rather that it drift into the Sargasso Sea of tomfoolery. The movie overstates the Establishment-vs.-youth culture impact of Britain's real-life offshore radio stations, but you may not mind as long as Curtis cranks up the hits by the Kinks, the Who and the Troggs after the BBC excludes rock from the airwaves.

Bartlett 10.

Planet 51 (PG, 97 min.) This is a trite compendium of everything that's wrong with non-Pixar computer-animated feature films. The voice actors (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Jessica Biel) mostly were chosen for their name recognition, not their mellifluousness; the "jokes" -- presented in the relentless, absurdist fashion of a "Family Guy" episode -- seem pulled from a checklist of stale pop-culture references (the Macarena, Facebook, "2001," etc.); the soundtrack is burdened with blah covers of pop/rock songs; and so on. The message of tolerance is welcome but obvious: People aren't "alien" just because they look strange, as an American astronaut discovers when he lands on an Earth-like planet of green outer-space beings.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Hollywood 20 Cinema.

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (R, 110 min.) Set in Harlem in 1987, director Lee Daniels' often grotesque and harrowing story of ghetto perseverance has been both wildly overpraised and unfairly maligned since its debut this year at the Sundance Film Festival, where it earned the top awards in drama, the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize. Thrust into the mainstream by the endorsements of Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, who signed on as "executive producers" after the project was finished, the film creates remarkable sympathy and understanding for its title character (played by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe), who is certainly one of the more unique heroines in movie history: an obese, basically illiterate, welfare-dependent, sexually abused 16-year-old junior high student with a Down syndrome daughter and another child on the way; both pregnancies were caused by her father. At times, the movie feels like a particularly intense "ABC After School Special," as an angelic teacher with the unlikely name of Blu Rain (Paula Patton) helps Precious free herself from her monstrous mother (sure-bet Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winner Mo'Nique) and pull herself from desperation to the brink of self-sufficiency. Fortunately, Sapphire's story and the film's performances are powerful enough to compensate for Daniels' occasional tastelessness and his unnecessary camera tricks.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Palace Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

The Princess and the Frog (G, 97 min.) Disney's ballyhooed return to hand-drawn animation is the first to feature an African-American "princess," but hold your applause: The heroine, a Jazz Age New Orleans working-class girl named Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni Rose), spends most of the movie inside the emerald skin of a bayou amphibian. Say it loud, I'm green and I'm proud: "It's not slime, it's mucus," Tiana asserts during the film's final act, by which time she's become resentful of those who shun her batrachian tackiness; she's also fallen for the similarly hoodooed Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos), who, in his human form, resembles every other blandly handsome European Disney prince except for his ethnically indeterminate dusky pallor. Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, who revived the Disney animation tradition (and the company's fortunes) with "The Little Mermaid" in 1989, this "warts and all" love story curiously lacks bounce; Randy Newman's musical numbers are toothless pastiches of classic Louisiana song types, so it's up to the flamboyant voodoo villain (beautifully voiced by Keith David) and the comical supporting critters (a Satchmo-esque alligator, a Cajun firefly) to give the film bite.

Forest Hill 8, Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16, Summer Quartet Drive-In.

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee travel post-apocalyptic America in 'The Road.'

Javier Aguirresarobe/The Weinstein Company

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee travel post-apocalyptic America in "The Road."

The Road (R, 108 min.) After an apparent global atomic war, a father and young son (Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee) desperately scavenge for food while avoiding cannibalistic marauders and trying to remain the "good guys" of their gray, postapocalyptic landscape, where the few remaining trees jut from the ash-covered ground like burnt matchsticks and the only splash of color is a trick of the light: a rainbow. Directed by John Hillcoat ("The Proposition"), this science-fiction art film imagines a world of solitary, ratty, traumatized vagabonds, who cling to shopping carts filled with meager possessions; it's as if the urban homeless have inherited the Earth. The movie is fine and honorable, yet it somehow manages to attain only a fraction of the heart-rending power of its grim source, Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Ridgeway Four.

The Stepfather (PG-13, 102 min.) Dylan Walsh does his best, but trying to top Terry O'Quinn's witty performance in the original 1987 cult-classic version of "The Stepfather" is like trying to replace Anthony Perkins in a "Psycho" sequel.

Bartlett 10.

2012 (PG-13, 158 min.) The bad news: The world as we know it has come to an end. The good news: Mommy's new boyfriend was squashed in the gears of a giant high-tech ark, so Daddy's back in the picture! These events are presented as being of more or less equal significance in the latest preposterous, overlong exercise in gleeful world-smashing spectacle from post-Irwin Allen master of disaster Roland Emmerich. Inspired by pseudoscientific claims that the Mayan calendar predicts the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, the film is a sort of disaster-genre greatest hits collection, gathering tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanoes and other special-effects traumas into that paradoxical form of entertainment that allows viewers to escape their real-life woes by imagining something far, far worse. This is the type of movie in which a huge ark, loaded with humanity "to ensure the continuity of the species," doesn't just crash into random noncelebrity obstructions as it floats on a newly formed ocean but into Air Force One and Mount Everest, in immediate succession. With John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Woody Harrelson as a backwoods radio prophet and Danny Glover as the president of the United States.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Raleigh Springs Cinema, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (PG-13, 130 min.) Kristen Stewart's Bella Swan (her name is still the best thing in the series) is torn between her love for self-exiled prettyboy bloodsucker Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and her attraction to Native American werehunk Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) in this wheel-spinning sequel, in which the virginal Bella's tedious moping (she longs to be "bitten," get it?) takes center stage until a poorly delivered telephone message (what a lame dramatic device!) implausibly sends everyone to Italy to confront the vampire lawmaking coven, the Vulturi. The most amusing moments are those in which director Chris Weitz indulges the desires of author Stephenie Meyer's primarily female fan base, as when he has Jacob gratuitously remove his shirt to mop Bella's blood or depicts Edward crossing a street in smoldering slow-motion.

Stage Cinema, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Palace Cinema, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Up in the Air (R, 109 min.) See review on Page 10.

Wolfchase Galleria Cinema 8, Majestic, Collierville Towne 16, DeSoto Cinema 16, Studio on the Square, Cordova Cinema, Paradiso, Hollywood 20 Cinema, CinePlanet 16.

Where the Wild Things Are (PG, 94 min.) Destined to be a favorite of artists, folkies, hipsters, cultists, therapists, film theorists and depressives, if not necessarily children, this distinctive, perhaps unprecedented project uses its 1963 picture-book inspiration like some sort of combination medical instrument and painter's brush, to probe and illuminate the themes of loneliness, insecurity and problematic love embedded within the crosshatch patterns of original author Maurice Sendak's drawings of furry monsters, magical trees and cozy bedrooms. Directed with an extreme indie/artsy sensibility by Spike Jonze, the movie is not so much an adaptation as an expansion of the book; the faithfully recreated monsters (played by actors in large suits) are given the mundane names (Alexander, Judith) and kvetching personalities of the adults in the "real" life of sensitive, emotional young Max (beautifully played by Max Records), the boy in the dirty terrycloth wolf suit who runs away from home to become the self-proclaimed king of the "wild things." Like its source, the movie -- which eschews digital effects for a handcrafted, woodsy look, as if it were manufactured from twigs and spit, like a bird's nest -- ends on a note of hope and comfort; even so, the scariness and despair are hard to shake off.

Bartlett 10.

© 2009 Go Memphis. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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